Catullus 5Catullus 5 is a passionate ode to Lesbia and one of the most famous poems by Catullus. The poem encourages lovers to scorn the snide comments of others, and to live only for each other, since life is brief and death brings a night of perpetual sleep. This poem has been translated and imitated many times. This poem is written in the Phalaecian hendecasyllabic meter (Latin: hendecasyllabus phalaecius)[1] which has verses of 11 syllables, a common form in Catullus' poetry.
TextVīvāmus, mea Lesbia, atque amēmus, rūmōrēsque senum sevēriōrum omnēs ūnius aestimēmus assis! sōlēs occidere et redīre possunt: nōbīs, quum semel occidit brevis lūx, nox est perpetua ūna dormienda. Dā mī bāsia mīlle, deinde centum, dein mīlle altera, dein secunda centum, deinde ūsque altera mīlle, deinde centum; dein, quum mīlia multa fēcerīmus, conturbābimus illa, nē sciāmus, aut nē quis malus invidēre possit, quum tantum sciat esse bāsiōrum. Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, and count the rumours of rather stern old men at a penny's fee! Suns may set and rise again; for us, when once the brief light has set, an eternal night must be slept. Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred; then, when we have performed many thousands, we shall shake them into confusion,[2] in order that we might not know, and in order not to let any evil person envy us, when he knows that there are so many of our kisses. Poetic effects
The position of lux (light) and nox (night) right next to each other serve to emphasise his two comparisons. Symbolically, the "perpetual night" represents death and the "brief light" represents life. Furthermore, there is also a second chiasmus in these lines:
Translations and songsIn 1601, the English composer, poet and physician Thomas Campion wrote this rhyming free translation of the first half (to which he added two verses of his own, and music, to create a lute song): My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love; Ben Jonson drew on the poem in poems 5, "Song. To Celia", and 6, "Song. To the Same" in his collection The Forrest. Soon thereafter, Sir Walter Raleigh included the following verse, apparently based on Campion's translation, in his The Historie of the World, which he wrote while imprisoned in the Tower of London:[3][4] The Sunne may set and rise A 16th-century French translation by Jean-Antoine de Baïf was used by Reynaldo Hahn in the song "Vivons, mignarde, vivons".[5] Also set in French, a translation by Georges Lafaye was composed by Darius Milhaud as song "Ma chérie, aimons‑nous".[6] Henry Purcell used an anonymous translation in his song "Let us, kind Lesbia, give away" (1684).[7] Dominick Argento used his English translation in his song "Let us live, my Clodia, and let us love".[8] References
Bibliography English Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Latin Wikisource has original text related to this article:
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